A supplier of products, such as computer products, storage products, communications products, and so forth, can be a source or reseller of such products. In a typical supply chain, the supplier of products can in turn have one or more customers (referred to as “selling customers”) who sell the products to further downstream customers (e.g., end users, distributors, retail stores, and so forth). In response to orders received from the further downstream customers, the selling customers submit corresponding orders to the supplier for products that are desired by the further downstream customers.
A typical product can have many features, with different downstream customers desiring different combinations of such features. If the burden is placed on the supplier to provide the many customizations that may be desired by downstream customers, then that may increase costs for the supplier, since the supplier would have to maintain and manage a potentially large inventory of differently customized products to ensure on-time delivery to the supplier's customers.